Doing a lot with a little – Watoto Wetu

Doing a lot with a little has been a theme of Devxchange projects since the beginning but today we visited one of the projects that is taking it to a whole new level. One of the keys to the success of any Devxchange project is the sacrifice, vision and commitment of the local partners.

Josephine (far right) exemplifies this passion. A few years ago she was feeling a sense of meaningless and purposeless in her life and felt there had to be more to life than living for yourself. She took a whole year off to reflect on life’s purpose, meaning and with much prayer started Fadhil Trust (AKA Watoto Wetu Project).

This project targets the poorest of the poor in rural areas through a micro-finance project much like the one I described in Bahirdar, Ethiopia. There are now more than 35,000 beneficiaries who are earning their way out of poverty through her well organized program.

In addition through one of our lead members, Peter Oussoren, they started sponsoring orphans and vulnerable children to go to school. The picture above shows a mother with HIV, who is a cobbler (shoe repair) and her son. She and her 7 kids have been living in this one room tin shack shown behind her. Thankfully, her son is one of the children sponsored through school (Watoto Wetu Project) and he is now in university.